In class this week – See Yoga for more details.
Wednesday at 5:30pm InQlusive Yoga
Wednesday at 7:00pm Yoga for Queers and Misfits
Saturday at 10:30am Align and Shine

I find I cannot breath so well right now. While I am getting over being sick, it started before that. Every since November 8th, I haven’t been able to breath as fully and as deeply as I used to. There is a steady vibration of the Unknown disrupting me on a fundamental level.

Nothing feels quite right.

In the many, many conversations I have had with peers and comrades and elders in the past five weeks, it has come up again and again that everything has changed…and nothing has changed. And this is true in two different ways (at least), simultaneously.

On the one hand, everything has changed for many folks who’ve enjoyed a life relatively insulated from the pernicious and pervasive effects of structural racism and economic exploitation, among other forces. For these folks, the election results were a very rude and uncomfortable awakening, a revelation of just how deep-seated this country’s racism, prejudice and tendency towards disenfranchisement are. And yet, from the folks who’ve always been targeted by that same racism and prejudice, the message seems to be, “What’s new? This is what we have been saying all along.” So in that sense, nothing has changed.

On the other hand, there is definitely an eerie feeling that “nothing has changed,” because life as we know it seems to be continuing to unfold in the same old ways, day in and day out. In some ways, it seems as if life goes on, as it were.

And yet, there is definitely a sense of a calm before the storm (the extent of the calm is also relative). We are all bracing for something, myself included. Thus, my inability to really breath fully and deeply. Something is very definitely about to happen. And for better or worse, we’re being called forth in this time in ways that many of us have not seen in our lifetime.

To contextualize all this, the patron saint of planetary prowess and astral illumination, Chani Nicholas, has given us another potent picture of what tonight’s Supermoon is about. And it is, not surprisingly, a whopper.

We are being asked to rebirth ourselves. Personally. Collectively. Globally. We are being asked to see the divisions. To see the places where we might still connect. To do the hard work of walking around, amidst and through what has been broken. Internally. Communally. Globally. To see the pain that is present and to be informed by it instead of reacting defensively to it. We are being asked to become more attuned to our own suffering and the suffering of those around us. We are being asked to see the unlimited potential in ourselves and in everyone else around us. We are being asked to do our part. Fearlessly. Humbly. With great determination. We are being asked to find our way through the chaos. -Chani Nicholas

If we are alive right now, it is for a very particular reason. And now is the time for us to get hip to exactly what that is. To do, as Chani invites us, the hard work necessary of walking among what has been broken. To tune in to our own suffering and to that of those around us.

It is the time that our practices have been preparing us for. For, as my teacher often says, the purpose of spiritual practice is to increase our capacity for compassion…which is to say, the practice increases our capacity to be with our own suffering and the suffering of others. It literally expands our hearts and deepens our roots, providing the stability and sustenance we need to keep drawing breaths and opening our hearts and eyes to what is unfolding around us. We need our practices right now, more than ever before. We are being asked to step into our practices and our power in unprecedented ways.

Part of the support and sustenance of the practice is revealed through our collective co-creation of such spaces. Join me. I feel we need each other more than ever.

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About bienestarte

Patty Adams is a bilingual clinical social worker, as well as an experienced yoga teacher and anti-oppression trainer. She is devoted to intersectional organizing, liberation, holistic healing arts, and wellness.